For unemployed young men like Paul Wheatley, working for the builders of London’s most iconic highrise would have been beyond their wildest dreams, and it’s not difficult to see why.

Over the past year, he has been made redundant, applied for about 500 jobs (at least nine a week), had two unsuccessful job interviews and, at 21, been told he is “too old” for an apprenticeship.

To top it all, Mr Wheatley, who lives with his disabled grandmother in Elephant and Castle, currently has no income after his jobseeker’s allowance was “sanctioned” for four months after a mix-up at the Job Centre.

Despite having qualifications in carpentry and bricklaying, he could not get work after his first and only job, in demolition, ended after the company went bust. “So I can’t get a reference,” he says. “To get a job you need experience, but how can I prove that without a reference?”

But Mr Wheatley’s luck could be about to turn. After attending the launch of the latest phase of the Evening Standard’s Ladder for London campaign, attended by Prince Andrew at the Pembury Estate in Hackney last month, he applied to be one of the first to benefit from our initiative to create blue-collar apprenticeships.

In partnership with Peabody, Ladder for London has secured pledges to create blue-collar apprenticeships for 176 young jobless adults across 19 employers.

Among the first to benefit will be 20 apprentices working for Mace, builders of The Shard and The Place, who will be employed in key projects across London in roles such as joiners, electricians and bricklayers. The schemes include building Peabody affordable homes in Kensington and Chelsea.

The total number of apprenticeships created through Ladder for London since its inception nine months ago now stands at 900.

Mr Wheatley spoke to the Standard while on a visit to The Place, alongside The Shard, where he is meeting bosses from Mace and Peabody and fellow applicants. He is hoping to be among the 20 selected to join their apprenticeship scheme.

“It brings me down [looking for jobs], I’ve been trying for ages, it’s not even a half-hearted attempt, I’ve been putting my all into it,” he says. “But now that I’ve found this apprentice scheme I feel like I have more of a fighting chance. The Job Centre is not very helpful, I feel the service is very poor. I don’t feel like a bum but I feel lazy because I’m going there to do what I do on a weekly basis over and over and over again, looking for a different outcome and nothing’s happening. If I get this [Ladder for London apprenticeship] it would mean everything to me. I’ve been trying so hard for so long, I think I’m due a break.”

Fellow candidate Awahsi Wright, 20, is also desperately hoping for a way out of unemployment through an apprenticeship with Mace. Mr Wright, who lives on Peabody estate in Pimlico, wants to be an electrician but has not worked since leaving college, where he did a level-three course in electrical installation.

He says: “Being unemployed is a lot of stress because you don’t want your life to pass you by, you want to show your skills. The plan is you go through college and you get a job straight away, and it’s not really like that at all. It’s hard, it’s hard to take it.”

The scheme’s first apprentice has already started his two-year training programme. Jack Clark, who is an apprentice in civil engineering, is working in Primrose Hill. The 21-year-old, who was working at a sausage factory doing night shifts, says that just a few days into his training he is already feeling like a new person. He says: Now I’m doing something I love, I’m a lot happier.”

Stephen Pycroft, executive chairman of Mace Group, said apprentices change rapidly as a result of being given the opportunity to transform their life.

He says: “In our own trainee programme, they can go from being quite shy and you see them transform into confident young people. If you ask the question, ‘What would you want in their position,’ you would want somebody to offer you a job.”

Christopher Strickland, Peabody chairman, said: “From our point of view this is what we were starting out to achieve, it’s all about action.

“The Ladder For London initiative was the catalyst, to have the Evening Standard creating that broader framework so that we could play our part.

“The Peabody consortium has committed at this stage to 176 apprenticeships through people like Mace, who have been fantastically supportive.”